Conventional methods of pasta cooking involve the hydration and cooking of pasta via immersion in boiling water. Boiling water having a temperature of approximately 100° Celsius begins to flash, therefore in order to increase the cooking temperature beyond 100° Celsius pressure vessels are required. Pressure cooking at the resulting increased temperatures creates a dramatic decrease in the required cooking time. Previous fast pasta cooking apparatus have no means for automatic pasta loading of a variable sized portion and are relatively energy inefficient as they discharge the heat energy of the vapor released upon depressurization of the pressure cooking chamber. Also, the previous designs utilize hinged trap doors for cooked pasta discharge. These hinged doors added manufacturing complexity/expense and increased the machines manual cleaning requirements.
Previous attempts at supplying fresh pasta from an automatic or semi-automatic machine have suffered from the inability to properly dispense dry pasta portions, measured from a bulk supply, into the cooking chamber. Previous solutions include supplying a plurality of portion chambers each pre-loaded with the pre-determined pasta portions. These designs suffer from the drawback of having only a limited number of pre-determined pasta portions available prior to requiring reloading. Also, the size of the pre-determined portions is difficult to modify and or swiftly reload once the plurality of pre-determined portion chambers are in place (a smaller portion size would require manual metering).